Lifeboat Foundation

If there is a high probability of alien life, why has none tried to make contact?

You have probably heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe (bearing in mind the vastness of space and that we keep finding planets within habitable zones) why has nobody got in touch yet? If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are because of how long the universe has dragged on, surely at least one would send out messages or probes, or do what we are doing: Desperately searching for signs of life?

Answers to the paradox range from the optimistic to the downright frightening. It could be that we simply haven’t been looking long enough, nor emitting our own traceable signatures for aliens to find us yet. Or it could be that no aliens will ever make it to the point where they are able to make contact with other species, destroying themselves long before they get to the kind of tech required to do so.

On Earth, technological advances required open-air combustion, which needs an oxygen partial pressure of about 18%. This threshold can help guide searches for detectable technospheres on other planets.

An ancient supernova has left a legacy so strange astronomers deemed it worthy of the nickname, despite never seeing the explosion.

In the quest to understand the potential for life beyond Earth, researchers are widening their search to encompass not only biological markers, but also technological ones. While astrobiologists have long recognized the importance of oxygen for life as we know it, oxygen could also be a key to unlocking advanced technology on a planetary scale.

In a new perspective published in Nature Astronomy, Adam Frank, the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester and the author of The Little Book of Aliens (Harper, 2023), and Amedeo Balbi, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy, outline the links between atmospheric oxygen and the potential rise of advanced technology on distant planets.

“We are ready to find signatures of life on alien worlds,” Frank says. “But how do the conditions on a planet tell us about the possibilities for intelligent, technology-producing life?”

We all mark days with clocks and calendars, but perhaps no timepiece is more immediate than a mirror. The changes we notice over the years vividly illustrate science’s “arrow of time”—the likely progression from order to disorder. We cannot reverse this arrow any more than we can erase all our wrinkles or restore a shattered teacup to its original form.

Or can we?

An international team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory explored this question in a first-of-its-kind experiment, managing to return a computer briefly to the past. The results, published March 13 in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest new paths for exploring the backward flow of time in quantum systems. They also open new possibilities for quantum computer program testing and error correction.

Programmable matter can reconfigure and adapt autonomously, extending to high-performance mechanical materials at scale.

Jan Bartek — AncientPages.com — Some already call it Australia’s lost Atlantis, but it is not quite the mythical underwater city Plato mentions. A large underwater site that was home to hundreds of thousands of people has been identified and mapped by scientists. Rising seas submerged the land northwest of Australia at the end of the last glacial period.

Rough sea along the coast in Australia. Credit: Adobe Stock — totajla

Using newly available high-resolution sonar data, the research team reconstructed the topography of the 400,000 square kilometers of land that is now covered by the Indian Ocean, known as the Northwest Shelf.

UK startup VividQ claims to have created the first-ever holograms with a “retina resolution.”

The milestone means holography can now match the resolution and real-life focus cues expected by the human eye, according to VividQ. The result is a “more natural viewing experience than ever before,” the company said. It now plans to deploy the tech in next-generation VR headsets.

To create the holograms, the company engineers light waves to render objects in 3D space. The technique mirrors the way we see objects because they reflect light into our eyes. In holography, software sets the light pathways.